From the archives

It’s true: Geoffrey Abbott’s Amazing True Stories of Female Executions contains some of the best collected tales of martyrs, murderesses and madwomen you’ll ever read.

It’s also pretty grisly stuff.

There’s the Reading Baby-farmer, who tied ribbons around the necks of her young victims and dumped them in the Thames, and the Yorkshire Witch, who sold potions for good health that turned out, incidentally, to be fatal.

Almost worse than the crimes themselves, are the punishments devised for the guilty. A description of thumbscrews explains the process of screws cutting into the wicks of the victim’s fingernails, concluding:

In some parts, Scotland in particular, thumbscrews were also known as pilliwinks, pilniwinks, penny-winks or pyrowinks: whatever their name, the result was pain.

Indeed. And then there are the witches’ bridles – the less said on that topic the better. And poor Margaret Clitheroe, a martyr whose hand was taken from her corpse and preserved in a reliquary. It appears that particular hand is lost, but here‘s St James’s, which I’m sure looks much the same, ie gross.

The problem with all this, is that I just. can’t. stop. reading.

 

ALL OF THE FEELINGS

Guess who has just been shortlisted for the Glenda Adams Prize for New Fiction?

The First Week cover

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CONGRATULATIONS MARGARET! Not that anyone here at Wakefield HQ is surprised. The First Week is gripping, beautifully written, and stays with you for a long time after you’ve finished reading. Click here to read an extract.

A new favourite: Benny of Verdun

Benny operates front of house at the Stanley Bridge Tavern, Verdun. He is a little Jack Russell, adopted by the tavern owners. They have a sign up asking people to ‘like’ Benny on Facebook, but he was apparently kicked off Linked-In for ‘not being a true professional’. This not only hurt Benny’s feelings, but is completely inaccurate. He is a consummate professional, entertaining and relaxing patrons.

For example, here he is keeping a Chesterfield soft and warm for the next occupant:

Benny on Chesterfield

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And here he is keeping guests company:

Benny with guest

And here he is enjoying a glass of red as a knock-off:

Benny having knock-offs

What a handsome boy! He looks like he could do with a book to unwind with though. Maybe Dogs in Australian Art? (Benny would make a great model.) Or I Love My Dog and My Dog Loves MeQuotable Dogs? Or City Dog Country Dog?

Thanks for the stellar service, Benny!

The wine state

The thing about SA is that we like a good time.

(The Festival State, is what our number plates used to read, until someone thought that we were giving too much away.)

We like to party, we like to think, and we like to debate.

We also like wine.

Wakefield Press have released many wine titles that have gone on to become classics over the years. Trott’s View is the McLaren Vale book, and the book is as beautiful as the region. John Gladstones’s Wine, Terroir and Climate Change, on the other hand, is a wine industry bible, especially after it was inducted into the Gourmand Wine Books Hall of Fame in 2011. If you want to read James Halliday’s views on that one, just take a look at this pdf.

And now there’s Barossa Shiraz, by Dr Thomas Girgensohn.

I could tell you about how this is a groundbreaking book. I could tell you about Girgensohn’s years of research, his meticulous knowledge of a complex region. How this kind of project has never been done before.

But let’s be honest, Robyn Lewis’s review on VisitVineyards.com says it better.

And the book says it best of all.

Makes for delightful reading over a glass of Barossa red. Of course.

 

 

Breaking bad news

We get a lot of junk mail sent to the reception email. It’s the downside to a public email address: on the one hand it’s great that everyone can get in touch, on the other hand there are only so many search engine optimisation emails that a girl can handle.

Recently, however, I’ve noticed a change in tenor in our spam. A – fairly drastic, I have to say – change in tack. It started when I found myself accused of committing a felony:

Crash spam

 

Hillary’s so cheerful about our road incident! It really is, when you think about it, very kind of her.

But the felony was nothing on the cancer:

Cancer spam

 

Well, that’s me done for. Guess I’m signing out for good, guys. It’s been great.

Love,

[email address removed] All rights reserved.

 

(SERIOUSLY! But if, by the by, you want a real insight into cancer, Geoff Goodfellow‘s the one to read.)

Best in the business

The cost of implementing an ERP system is easily eclipsed by the ROI of a more efficient, fully optimized business environment.

How is ERP different?

ERP is a method of organizing and managing systems of information. Most businesses have a web-based or networked IT infrastructure (or both). ERP was developed as a way of using existing information systems to organize and manage existing information.

ERP consists of two main components: the management system and the content management system (CMS). The management system (also called the ERP system) gathers, stores, and processes information. It helps organize and prioritize activities, and it provides centralized information access. The CMS facilitates information flow, enabling business units to access and create their own content.

For example, business units may wish to add or modify information about them through ERP, but they don’t necessarily want to change how it is stored, managed, and distributed. ERP systems also enable business units to use existing databases (often one that was designed for a different business unit) to do their own work and make their own data available to other business units.

Businesses use ERP systems to collect, store, and organize their information. Examples include billing systems, payroll systems, accounting systems, timekeeping systems, and business intelligence systems.

Information management systems are used to allow a group of companies to access information from one another. For example, a bank uses ERP to organize information about its customers and accounts, as well as customer accounts and credit reports.

If you are thinking about implementing a system for your business, or if you are looking to create one, then you have come to the right place. In this section, we will look at five important systems within ERP that you need to consider when you compare ERP systems.

a data warehouse

a customer relationship management (CRM) system

a CRM management system

a CRM business intelligence system

a CRM knowledge base system If you already have an ERP system, there are a couple of things to keep in mind. The first is that there are many components of the ERP system that you can separate out. There are different levels of organization that you can choose to deploy to. You will only need a set of systems that fits within your company, and your organization’s specific needs. But if you are developing your own system, you will need to think about: How to organize information about your customers?

How to organize data in your ERP?

How to organize information about your customers and accounts? Where are the databases stored? How are data objects stored? Is there a single solution that can handle all the information? How do the different systems communicate with each other? How do different systems interact with the internet, with each other, with your own internal database?

This is something that you need to make sure that you and your development team are well aware of when you start developing your own ERP. That’s because your system will not work if you’re not thinking about how it interacts with your external systems.

How do you manage data access? How do you manage all the different databases that your system will need to work? How do you manage database access using multiple authentication systems, with multiple users? How do you manage access to your applications? This is something that you need to make sure that you and your development team are well aware of when you start developing your own ERP. That’s because your system will not work if you’re not thinking about how it interacts